Music Industry Review

1. How has online media developed? - Online media has developed by becoming more social and collaborative.  Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube and Sound cloud have allowed people to share their music globally without the need for large amounts of money.  However it has also lead to an all time high in music piracy because the internet has made it a lot easier to do.  This has lead to the music industry having to rethink how they control usage of their music.  The music industry is now less dominated by the media gods and gatekeepers because more people can have their say in what music is produced and distributed.
2. What has been the impact of the internet on media production? - It is now possible to produce your music over the internet at a much lower cost than going to a record labels recording studio.  You can collaborate with other people who have different talents to make the parts of your music that you cannot do yourself.
3. How is consumer behaviour and audience response transformed by online media, in relation to the past? - Consumers used to have to listen to what the media gods and gatekeepers, media conglomerates, allowed into the industry.  Now we have a society with Prosumers, consumers who also produce their own music and are a more active audience.  We can get our voices heard on social networking sites such as Twitter and websites such as iTunes have a large variety of music choice.  We can also download music illegally, bypassing the media gods altogether.
4. To what extent has convergence transformed the media? - Smart phones allow you to listen to a large library of music, thousands of songs rather than a single album.  You can also watch music videos on youtube, view artists twitter pages and record your own sounds.  This allows consumers more choice in how they consume their media, rather than having to wait for songs to be broadcast on the radio or for music videos to be shown on tv.